Sleep, Testosterone and Dopamine: Why Men Are Tired And Unmotivated

00:00 If your sleep is off, your whole life will be off. Men if you think you've got a discipline problem... ...if you think you've got an energy problem.... ...if you think you've got a sex problem the reality could just be..... You're exhausted! Roll theme Welcome to The Jonnie Jensen Show, where modern dads discover how to create the true riches relationships and results they deserve. Get your High Value Man blueprint and join our community at highvaluemanproject.com Let's go!

00:45 Before anybody thinks I know all about this, trust me you don't. There is a whole science behind sleep there is a whole way of managing your lifestyle your life your environment that will impact and benefit your sleep and the reason why sleep is so important the reason why sleep is literally the first element of The High Value Man Project Fire Tracker it's because it is the foundation for everything if your sleep is off Then everything else will be off. You know, they use it as torture and sleep deprivation when you've had little kids you'll know that is the toughest time of your life when you've got babies and you're trying to juggle your life and you're absolutely exhausted. That's why there's probably an optimum time to have babies. The reason I want to cover this off because it creeps up on you

01:39 You know, we're busy. We're juggling life where we are up to stuff and if I look at my sleep tracker for the last month it is again really off November of the same month you know i'm all out of kilter that doesn't go first to the 30th or whatever but if I look at like four week blocks Summer was awesome. September was way off, October I got it back on track and then November it's been off again and its to do with workload for me of either juggling the kids or I'm I'm going to go through some of that today with you so that you really understand what's going on in your body and then we'll just talk about some of the practical aspects of fixing and addressing this. Probably go for about 20 minutes today, my journey with sleep has been

03:03 I've always slept pretty good. I'm a light sleeper, but I sleep well so you know when it was kids time if the kids were up or crying or something was going on i could be like bing and what else? Oh! I got this crazy over sensitive hearing as well so I can literally hear when the heating comes on or a car alarm five streets away like stuff like that will wake me up and yet I sleep well I can get to sleep I can get back to sleep I had a girlfriend, awesome woman. A lot of fun! We were together for about four years and she had a sleep issue and i took it upon myself as a bit of a fixer to study up on on sleep and we will get into shortly some of what I learned in that book and other books. I'll recommend a couple of books

03:52 And really just try and make this topic real for you because a brilliant expression I heard once, it's probably on a podcast. The guy said before you decide your depressed check your not just really bloody tired and that hit home for me so well because we'll talk about the science behind it right now but fatigue weighs heavy on you You're irritable, you're snappy. You are less productive. You feel detached from people and there's a science behind all of this so before you think something is wrong before you think you've got an anger problem before you think your depressed before you think you can't get it up before you think your weak and lazy because you aren't going to the gym have a look foundationally you might just be really bloody tired

06:07 Research is so much easier these days with chat GPT. And what I always do with chat GPT is, I start from the basis of what I want to say and then I build it around there. So I use as an efficiency tool. So we're going through some of the chemicals that are affected by sleep first and foremost, so that you understand this is a mechanical issue more than anything else practically yeah, you need to get to sleep more. We'll talk about what you can do for that in a moment but let's understand it okay? So the big D dopamine This is your drive chemical. This is the chemical that's fuelled by the reward centre in your brain. Habits are fundamentally driven by dopamine, your momentum, your desire... Like it's a reward chemical right?

06:50 This is what it says. When you don't sleep, dopamine drops. Dopamine is your motivation, your drive, your ability to follow through. Sleep deprivation turns that dial down so everything feels harder. So this chemical that your body's producing, you produce less of it when you're tired and it's like a double whammy really because When you're tired, you do less. So let's pick the obvious one like go for a jog or go to the gym. The feel-good chemical...the reward..the buzz that you get from that Kicks starts fuels the feel good chemicals. So you exercise, you're happy that you got out of bed. You're happy that you've gone there as well as the pumping the bloody through...the blood through your body, the endorphins that you are creating. The dopamine that comes from that is like a double whammy because you feeling buzzed cause you're there but you're feeling buzzed because you got there and it's not like just something you made up is being fueled by the chemicals, by dopamine fundamentally

07:50 You know, men who think they've lost their mojo. Like you have! It's not that you can't get it back or something terribly wrong it's just that you're not feeding your body with healthy dopamine and when I say healthy dopamine we can get tricked these days by our phones more than anything but also gambling porn these kind of... Or even nicotine real alcohol like the hit we can find from dopamine can be triggered by all sorts of things and when if we stick with doomscrolling looking at your phone Like TikTok is a killer for it with our teens. We get that instant hit of energy, excitement something funny something awesome but it's not real so we are draining our dopamine we are burning out through these poor lifestyle choices poor habits So you've got to get up off your ass and and get out there like

08:47 You know, when my kids were little when the marriage was on the rocks and my wife was ill. Like when I was working late into the night, I became burnt out because I was fueling myself artificially to get through the day but the heaviness of it all led me to a lot of panic and stress and drama which looking back I might have dealt with it differently if I hadn't been so exhausted could I have fixed what was going on? So I wouldn't have been so exhausted. I don't actually know Jonnie Jensen And when we look at the fire code, so many other aspects of the lifestyle tracker. The habits and routines spending quality time with your wife, spending quality time with your kids going out with your friends managing your finances reading something exercising journaling getting enough sleep these all fuel your dopamine okay next chemical up is cortisol the stress hormone So a lack of sleep spikes your cortisol

09:58 Your body thinks you're in danger, so you become more reactive. More emotional, more overwhelmed by small things. So cortisol is an emotional trigger being tired spikes your cortisol. You then end up being snappy frustrated resentful like you're in it. You're an emotional hot spot basically whatever those things could be maybe even tears whatever

10:36 So you become less effective, more arguments at home. More arguments with the kids everything starts to feel like it's a little bit too much and then men start to think that there is something wrong with them like personality wise. Like the classic one is you've got an anger problem Now, anger is another whole subject. Anger management we'll cover that in another podcast actually it's down as a topic to come along when you're really tired and when you're snappy and frustrated and the littlest things are triggering you then get told you've got an anger problem or no I'm just really flippant exhausted and your don't empathize with me your not cutting any slack were not working as a team here boom! You can see now into an argument which is also going to spike your cortisol so you're fueling burnout

11:23 The Jonnie Jensen Show, is It comes back to that feeling flat, the amount of desire you have in your relationships. That sexual energy like it's a virility passion driver testosterone so when you feel you're lacking testosterone along with these cortisol and dopamine you will feel emotionally fragile which is like a weakness

12:27 So as the man you want to be, you're now looking at yourself in the mirror or experiencing yourself during the day. It's like what the hell is wrong with me? Why am I so... why can't I do this? Why am I always having arguments? Why don't I get it out? Like what that...? I'm terrible! And so you start to turn what is a chemical situation into a mental health situation because you're running a number on yourself when actually it's just a chemical. You need to get more of these chemicals into you Lack of testosterone will have you feel disconnected from yourself and from the people in your life. Okay, next up the prefrontal cortex an amazing piece of kit inside our bodies if you want to know why your kids are bonkers when they're like teenagers early 20s it's because the prefrontal cortex isn't fully formed and it's where we rationalize things is where we empathizes where we process information

13:24 It manages discipline, decisions logic and emotional control. So when your prefrontal cortex is exhausted it shuts down and then you start to operate from the more reactive emotional part of your brain So when you're tired, this is why you make stupid decisions. You're reactive. It's why you reach for sugar and alcohol and junk food because you want to create some sort of spike, some sort of hit that pushes you forward because... Because when you come in, you're all foggy and cloudy like oh I must be hungry or I need some caffeine. And part of this exhaustion in your brain is why you will end up giving up on things

14:16 It'll be where you quit new habits, your relapse into bad ways. You coast from week to week knowing that you want to do something different but failing and then finally whilst this isn't a chemical as such like the ones we've been talking about it is a process okay it's a function of your body and this is circadian rhythms...it's your body clock And your body runs on a rhythm. It's kind of given a little bit as well by the, by the moon and the sun obviously that day and night rhythm light wakes you up darkness prepares you for sleep we've got melatonin that kicks in there's this stuff around adaptogens when with what happens when we drink coffee in the morning and screens caffeine busy evenings like

15:08 Jonnie Jensen And then they go back down. So you're peaking, that's why you might get when you call it like a second wind, you're peaking at certain points and then you drift in and feel more snoozy other points. If you're waking up consistently let's say for me if I don't go to bed around 1030 if I'll get...I'll go back on the up and so around 12 I'll get really flipping focused and effective

15:59 And then I'll work really well until sort of 1, 130. And then I'll start to go back down and be the time that I'm finishing work maybe if I've done a late one but of course iIm trying to turn the laptop off after having like all these lights and blue screens and I'm thinking straight so that is when you're messing with your circadian rhythm watching porn late at night wrecks your circadian rhythms doom scrolling on your phone like you got to tune into the rhythm of your body working out just before bed no good You've got to tune into the rhythm of your body and work with it. If you start to keep a diary or track these things, you should be able to actually plot where your natural circadian rhythms are in the evening. That's when you should be going to bed. Maximise it! So that's all the science behind what goes on for us all. What I didn't realise as a bloke was that that was all stuff

16:56 I thought that I just had to get through it. I thought that I just had to be the man, work late, get up early, sort out the kids, get off to work, get home from work you know tidy up the mess put the kids to bed make my own dinner because someone else bloody wouldn't! It just had to get through it so being tired wasn't an option The idea that pushing through was going to work, if I'd been more aware of this chemical the sort of science behind it then i might have been more careful. Like would you drive your car with no oil in it? Would you drive your car at 100 mile an hour in second gear? It would break and that's what you have to realize when you start to track your sleep you'll see... If you've been getting less than what we say you need to get

17:45 If you track it and you're getting less than that, you'll be into what's called sleep debt. And that works exactly like your bank account. You put money into your bank account and go into credit. That means you can spend more freely when you go into debt It means you owe! And you've now got an overdraft. So everything that you take or spend is going to push you deeper into that overdrive, You've gotta catch up. You gotta put more money into the bank. You gotta put more sleep into the bank so that you get back into credit and have got more to play with because the reality is that we won't always get seven hours sleep a night but could you get more? Could you top it up if you want to? Important point about this right as we start getting into lifestyle choices

18:35 That doesn't mean sleep in late at the weekends. And like people, some people would love this. Yeah I love to sleep in! The important thing to know about sleep is that it has a rhythm so when you mess with that rhythm it doesn't actually support you. It's far better to get a consistent amount of sleep on a consistent basis rather than think oh I'll just catch up at the weekend. That's never been me and thankfully I'm with someone now Joe and I we get up and we make the most of our mornings When I was a kid, making Lego with my dad at five o'clock in the morning. When Jago was a baby and he used to wake up early in the morning and we would watch cartoons build stuff. I think he took his first steps of me in the kitchen one early one morning it was precious time but more than anything that's our natural rhythm that's when we get up so you've got to go to bed earlier right? In order that you get the right amount of sleep and what we're talking about here in these rhythms is morning and evening routines

19:38 I'm not going to go into this in too much detail because it should be bloody obvious, but I will list these things so that you can have a look at yourself and your life to realize. I don't have a routine when you say I don't have a routine what it really means is you've probably got shit one because if you do something the same way every day then that is a routine an evening route an afternoon routine looks like no caffeine after two o'clock maybe even earlier It looks like what sort of time you eat your evening meal, which also means have you got the food in or are the kids sorted out so that your evening meal is at a routine time? I don't mean set. Like we're flipping in prison and we've got to always eat at seven o'clock when the bell goes but some kind of rhythm which means that you're eating at a particular time which means that your evening downtime starts at a particular time

20:30 Because you want to be really getting into a relaxed state of being about 60, some people say 90 minutes right but I think that's a little bit unrealistic. But to be able to say at least an hour before bed you should be relaxing definitely! At least an hour before bed your phone should be put down okay watch tv read a book have sex these are parts of your family connections The Jonnie Jensen Show,

21:24 Again, another subject you're probably talking about testosterone levels there. You're talking about HRT and women going through perimenopause and menopause but having intimacy be part of your evening routine is important whether that's cuddling on the couch or letting that evolve into sex then bloody brilliant by the way Particularly in long-term relationships, plan for sex. Have as well as your date nights and times where you sit down and communicate about your relationship schedule sex in! And not like 8 o'clock get them off love but like yes that's the night we do that that's the night everything around our life for that day is geared towards the evening being that

22:08 It's a, we'll talk about sex again also in another episode. But having that as a planned event actually can be so much more I'm Like what setup are you creating? Would you walk around in a pair of shoes that were 10 years old and all wobbly on one side, but that is some people's beds. Would you put on a jumper that was ten years old and all bobbly and uncomfortable? No, that's some people sheets. You've got to understand when was the last time you decorated your bedroom? And then I think I want to say something about the middle of the night right

23:10 When you wake up in the middle of the night, the worst thing you can possibly do is reach for your phone. You want to do something that keeps you at a low beta state like a low brain frequency state so some chilled music maybe meditate actually a change of room can really work rather than laying there going I'm trying to get to sleep being relaxed Jonnie Jensen Show, Jonnie Jensen Show,

24:07 The Inspired by multiple people. Hal Elrod's book is bloody brilliant, but you can go back before then and look at Earl Nightingale, Zig Ziglar like the morning routine thing I dare say it's even in the Bible right? Like what you do with your mornings matters how you get up drink water first thing you do pint of water some kind of journaling even if it's planning out your day these are my goals for days this is my I am list this is what I'm grateful for

24:47 Then some exercise. You know, we were doing the Super 7 Fitness Challenge in the High Value Man Project for November. It's a 10 minute workout. Seven body weight exercises, a minute each you're done in 10 minutes. If you do that every day, you will end up strong but more than anything it kickstarts your whole body brings exercise brings cortisol down and puts spikes dopamine up. It tunes your prefrontal cortex into what you're doing is something positive. Your focused So you see how the chemistry and the science of your body all comes back into play here. Eating a decent breakfast, high protein and then getting on with your day. Sleep is a process in life it's something for you to manage effectively and when you manage it effectively you will show up better

25:39 First and foremost for yourself. More awake, more agile, more creative, more productive, more happy, more enthusiastic, more positive... just MORE, MORE, MORE, MORE, MORE by being well rested! And then for the people around you, they get to experience you as we call it your true self. As the best version of yourself which means that they reflect that back on you They're not shitty and snipey and aggro tense walking on eggshells They're relaxed and happy and inspired and in love with you So you get it reflected back on you And that's what so important about all the stuff we do inside The High Value Man Project is that when you show up as the best version of yourself, strong confident in control. It's reflected back on you peace and empathy, connection, results success productivity intimacy passion laughter joy it's all reflected back on you if you think

26:40 Everyone's against you. If you think life is not working out, if you think you're not able to be the person you want it might just because your really bloody tired! Everything we do inside The High Value Man Project is geared around you waking up to this, waking up yourself and creating the life that you desire rather than one that you feel stuck in. highvaluemanproject.com forward slash group will get you in there. If you wanna book a power call with me you can book that as well its free for everybody who comes and joins for the first time Share this with other men in your life. Subscribe and leave a review wherever you're listening or watching because that really helps us spread the message, and help more men in the world thrive I'll see you next time let's go! Thanks for tuning into The Jonnie Jensen Show be sure to subscribe leave a review and share it with fellow dads

27:34 Creating the life you deserve starts with you. Get your High Value Man blueprint and join our community of motivated modern dads at highvaluemanproject.com Let's go!